


For the Girl Who Has Everything

by AceQueenKing



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Gift Giving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 05:46:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16278899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: 6O works hard to find a way to pay 2B back for the flower.





	For the Girl Who Has Everything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skylark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/gifts).



The flower belongs nowhere in her command center. It’s a patently ridiculous thing; most of the operators who look at her desk look with curiosity but she ignores them. It is hers, and if their YorHa units do not give them presents for their travels, then so much the worst for them. 6O curls her fingers around the stem as she sits in her seat, adjusting the familiar veil over her mouth as she begins another day of work.

Operator 60, officially assigned to Yorha Unit 2 of Class B, loves her job. She loves 2B, loves being connected to 2B day in and day out. Though she is not always on duty — even android Operators must take breaks, after all, her legs will rust without use — she is always connected to Yorha Unit 2 of Class B, just in case there’s an emergency. She walks the path between the stairway to her room and she thinks of 2B, wonders where she is, what she’s doing.

Sometimes she takes the flower home with her when Operator 2Y comes to relieve her of her duties. It’s not that she doesn’t trust 2Y, it’s that she wants to hold something of 2B’s, to smile at 2B’s flower and hear 2B’s voice far away on the blue marble she watches from space. She wants more than anything to go down there herself, to fight at 2B’s side, but she has not requested the required paperwork. A part of her is afraid to.

“Thank you for the flowers,” she says, as if it means all that she wants it to mean. 2B isn’t just the bringer of flowers for her, but so much more. She imagines 2B, tries hard to note all the unique features of Unit 2 of YorHa unit B – the skirt, long and playfully flouncy; the eyepatch visor; the voice like a clarion bell. 2B is a good unit, and 6O is her Operator. She is as attuned to 2B as 2B is to the mission, and even if 2B doesn’t say much, well — Operator 60 knows what she means to her.

2B has done the impossible, has brought her a piece of Earth. And that is enough.

Except it isn’t, not really; she wants to give 2B a present in return but she can give 2B none of the riches she deserves; YorHa Operators cannot go to Earth, and Operator 6O cannot give 2B anything that the YorHa commander couldn’t. She reads old earth-books sometimes, ones that have been scanned long ago for any wealth that came before, but they are futile guides: Operator 6O cannot give 2B food to eat, nor diamonds from a long-dormant mine, nor even her beating heart: for what  an android has cannot be called a heart, not really; she has no blood.

But still, she loves 2B, and her fingers flutter over the flower as she tries to think what proper thanks would be. She longs to go on missions with 2B; to be remade into a new unit, reassigned, but she enjoys this body and any combat unit would mean 2B would be assigned a new operator, and 6O cannot stand the idea of having someone else following 2B, cannot stand the idea of someone else instructing her, someone else guiding her through danger. What if they were bored, and their attention wavered, and for that, 2B was lost? No. She cannot do it. 2B’s safety is crucial to her, and in that thought, she finds her gift.

It takes her months to make the perfect present for 2B; supplies are hard to find in the desert for YorHa units and she can’t ask 2B to find her supplies for her – it would make things far too obvious. Instead, she smelts down bits of unneeded metal in her room: a tin cup here, a long steel pole there; things that belonged to prior occupants or prior versions of herself.

It takes time to learn metallurgy too; she is no great sword-smith but she has endless ability to download new programs to help her YorHa unit in combat, and there is no greater thing she could do than to help 2B on her mission.

She takes exquisite notes on 2B’s preferences – the type of weapon she prefers (large swords), the arrangement her hands fall in on them, the color she is fond of, the exact patterns of movements that 2B uses to hack and slash at her enemies. She is not a YorHa combat unit, but she is an Operator, and she blessed, if not with the capacity for taking lives, then with the capacity for remembering in endlessly large files all the ways that 2B does.

It takes her a long time to shape it the way she knows 2B will like; she flattens one end in an elegant, wing-shaped pattern on the hilt, knowing that 2B prefers a fancy hilt 90% of the time. She is careful to leave the areas where 2B’s fingers will go blank, to leave them be smooth and flat for 2B to get a superior grip. She makes the flat sword wide and sharp, to the point it nearly cuts her synth-skin as she dips her fingers down it. She works, months and months on end, until it is made: a sword of great quality, beyond compare.

“I have something for you,” she says, the next time 2B comes up to the station. That in itself is a great treat to them both; things are getting worse on earth, but that just has meant 6O has more time to get the present right, and never has it been more important.

2B tilts her head; she is pleased, 6O thinks. She can still see all the data readout on 2B and she can see the way her emotions spike – curiosity, happiness. She gives her flower a reassuring pat as she takes 2B to her room, as she shows 2B the sword on the table.

“It’s for you!” She says, and she struggles to lift the sword that she has poured so much of her life into, but 2B takes it from her, and grasps it, and 6O has never been happier than at this moment, as 2B admires her work.

“Thank you,” she says, turning it this way and that. She inspects it carefully, because she is a 2B unit, and they know no different, 60 knows. “This is….a nice weapon.” She looks at 6O carefully, and 6O’s breath hitches in her pulmonary mainframe – an odd, human impulse, but one she still feels.

“I made it for you. To keep you safe,” she says; her hand slides around 2B’s shoulder and though she has no natural heart, the artificial gears that pump coolant and oil through her system are pumping at maximum output. Her air sensors malfunction again as 2B leans close, and press a soft, cold kiss upon her cheek.

“…Thank you,” she says, quietly, throwing the sword over her shoulder. It looks good on her, as 6O always thought it would. “I…need to see the Commander about something.” She’s gone then, and 6O’s heart hitches, because something buried deep in 6O’s memory banks suggests that every time that 2B has met with the Commander, things have gone badly after that.

But that can’t quite be right; must be a programming glitch, for she cannot remember 2B meeting the commander at all.

6O walks back to her station and keeps an eye out for 2B on the floor. As she gets back to her seat, she absentmindedly presses the stem of her flower, and she smiles.


End file.
